For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought. ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a language).
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Please see this funtastic cartoon on identity. Please don't allow women discrimination....
ReplyDeleteI have rather mixed feelings on this and we British look at this issue in a different wauy to the French. On the one hand people should be free to where what they like. Some muslim women are no doubt happy to wear a full body and face covering (except eyes), but I also think that women are treated as second class by a number of religions, including islam. The Church of England and the Catholic Church treat women differently to men, though in more subtle ways. The main thing is that no woman should feel forced to wear a dress code. If they are, then Sarkozy is right. I wonder how his message will be received in some quarters.
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